The purpose of this project is to widen the understanding of democratic political inclusion. Political inclusion conceptualise access and real influence in political processes. The first aim is to make an analysis of theories of political inclusion from a democratic and a gender perspective. The second aim is to elaborate the concept of political inclusion in democratic theory through the insights of the role of bureaucracy in policy processes. Parents in general have specific relations to the welfare services through childcare, parent's involvement in school, and so on. For immigrant mothers those interactions with public service may have a special impact on their images and expectations of the political system in a broader sense. Do immigrant mother's first contacts with welfare services affect their future political engagement? Do their relations encourage participation in other forms of politics, constitutional as well as non-constitutional? A comparison between the US and Sweden gives the opportunity to discuss differences and similarities between two discourses of inclusion and democracy as well as experiences of involvement in the welfare services in two different welfare systems. The empirical study contains immigrant mother's experiences of public administrations in their roles as clients, users with possibilities to engage for example in school boards, and as members of various associations.